L Big M | Little Big Man [VHS] | Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway

Tragicomic Tour of the Old West | Little Big Man [VHS] | Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway

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	• Little Big Man [VHS] Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway 20th Century Fox, 1996 average customer review:based on 112 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Classic tragic comedy

I saw this film again after a hiatus of 25 years recently, and it held up very well. No doubt the fans of the Berger book hated it, but as a movie it comes off very well. It stands as one of the great absurdist movies in the contrasts it draws between the white man and the Indians. And the Indians aren't all good--the Paiutes are portrayed as bad Indians--as bad as the whites. But the strength of the movie is in its hilarious and often tragic comparisons between the two cultures, and we see the absurdity and complexity of the white man's ways thrown into relief by comparison with the simplicity of the Indian ways. The dialog is sometimes totally demented and resembles nothing so much as the European theater of the absurd transplanted to the American west. In one of the greatest ironic/satirical movie roles of all time, Chief Dan George delivers many of these lines, such as when he comments on one of his wives (I think I have it more or less correct, but cut me some slack): "Snake woman cooks dog well, and has very soft skin. But the problem with snake women is that they copulate with horses. She denies it, of course, but she is lying. This is why I call her, "woman who does not like horses"." LOL. Some day I'm going to have to read the book just to see if it was toned down for the movie.

The all-star cast all turn in great performances and Hoffman turns in possibly the best performance of his career, and certainly the most wide ranging one in going from a teenager to a 120-year old man during the course of the movie. The other stars were also great and there's not a false note among them. Martin Balsam doesn't always get as much credit as he should having spent his entire career in character-actor roles, but here he is superb as the eternally optimistic snake oil salesman who is continually losing body parts, eventually becoming peg-legged, one-handed, and one-eyed. Faye Dunaway plays a seductive and naughty preacher's wife and she's the perfect choice for this role. Also notable were Jeff Corey as Wild Bill Hickok and Richard Mulligan as the ambitious but narcissistic General Custer. By the way, just a little trivia here, Custer graduated at the bottom of his West Point class, but still made general at a very young age. One thing you could say about the Old West was that there were certainly opportunities for quick advancement that don't exist today. :-)

Overall a great movie that has stood the test of time.

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L Big M

After seeing Custer's Little Big Horn uniform in the Smithsonian, I thought the movie softened the battle scenes -- but captured the arrogant ambition of the General.

Tragicomic Tour of the Old West

A happy/sad movie slash history lesson in the guise of an old man recalling his younger days growing up in the old west. The scenes between Jack Crabb (Hoffman) and Gen Custer were my favorite. The actor who played Custer was hilarious and perfectly cast for the part. Actually all the acting and scenes in this movie were well-done. I thought it started out kind of slow at first but found I was getting right into it after a little while. This movie could probably be most appreciated by anyone familiar with the famous/infamous figures of the the American old west, and the movie is something of a marvel in that it seems to bring the old stories alive through the (tall?) tale of the narrator (Jack Crabb) who at one time or another seemed to have crossed paths with all of them. As a testament to the rape of Native American culture this film is very moving, as the on-screen recreation of genocide usually is. It is a humorous picture overall, though while cheerful, retains a tragi-comic edge throughout. Lots of off the cuff unintentional hilarity in lines like "We are even now - I paid you the life I owe you and the next time we meet I can kill you without becoming an evil person."

The scope is epic and the movie runs at 139 minutes. Besides the Jack Crabb/Custer scenes ("Muleskinner!"), also bigger than life is the tale of Jack's taking on 3 other wives at the request of his first ("I knew you were a good man."). I read the book before I saw the movie and the book was excellent. I was happy to find that the story also worked well as a film.

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Great movie!

My wife likes Dustin Hoffman, but had never heard of Little Big Man, so I purchased it for her. We both loved it. Nice price and prompt delivery.

Great old flick

Great old flick just to wile away the time with your favorite drink and popcorn. Sly comments on how we really won the west and on society in general. And, do those actors look young! Maybe just a touch long, but still fun.

Jack Crabb is the only white survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn and the centenarian shares his story in this picaresque fable of the Old West. In Arthur Penn's adaptation of Thomas Berger's novel, Dustin Hoffman plays Jack from teen years into old age in a bravura performance. And Jack's story is a fantastic one: captured by Indians as a boy, reared as an Indian, shuttling back and forth between the white and Indian worlds. In the process, he befriends everyone from Wild Bill Hickock to George Armstrong Custer and is a gunslinger, a snake-oil salesman, and an Army scout. This is a solid blend of comedy and tragedy, with a strong statement to make about America's treatment of Native Americans without sermonizing. A terrific cast includes Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam, and Richard Mulligan. But this show is all Hoffman's. --Marshall Fine

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